All you need to make an Xbox 360 Lego disc changer of your very own is a few Lego bricks, a bit of spare time and a degree in advanced engineering.

To be perfectly clear about this, by "a few Lego bricks" I mean about 3000, and "a bit of spare time" is really more like, say, "winter." As in, all of it. But the engineering degree thing is probably fairly accurate. Anyway, if you happen to have all that at hand, then you too can, in theory at least, build something like this monstrosity created by a fellow calling himself "zwenkka."

"The Carousel," as he calls it, uses three Lego Mindstorm NXT programmable robotics kits, seven NXT servos, a radio-controlled motor, a light sensor and two color sensors, plus the assorted bricks required to hold it all together. It can handle up to 32 discs manipulated by a pneumatic claw, and the whole thing is controlled by an Android app over Bluetooth. It takes roughly 42 seconds to change a disc.

I have no idea how a guy can be too lazy to get off the couch to swap discs in his 360, yet be willing to spend an entire season, not to mention hundreds of dollars in Lego kit, building this thing. The exchange time is absolutely glacial, too. And yet I can't stop thinking that this may well be the greatest disc changer I've ever seen, and perhaps of all time. Am I wrong?

(Hint: Unless you can hook me up with a video of a trained lemur who will change discs on demand, then no, I am not wrong.)

Andy Chalk:I have no idea how a guy can be too lazy to get off the couch to swap discs in his 360, yet be willing to spend an entire season, not to mention hundreds of dollars in Lego kit, building this thing.

Yea, that's kinda the engineering mindset for you. It's not a matter of solving the problem in the most expedient manner. It's a matter of SCIENCE!!!

Andy Chalk: I have no idea how a guy can be too lazy to get off the couch to swap discs in his 360, yet be willing to spend an entire season, not to mention hundreds of dollars in Lego kit, building this thing.

Andy Chalk: I have no idea how a guy can be too lazy to get off the couch to swap discs in his 360, yet be willing to spend an entire season, not to mention hundreds of dollars in Lego kit, building this thing.

BroBro BroBroooooosrslyDo you even Lego?If you Lego'd, you'd know.

Agreed, I made several iPod stands outta Legos, including one of the ones with a motor so that it could adjust the screen angle. Legos are awesome and I have all the ones I had when I was a kid.

gmaverick019:oh jeez in b4 the lego nazi who has to correct everyone on their usage of the word "lego" being plural *sigh*

That would be me! The constant use of "Legos" in reference to multiple Lego bricks drives me insane. However I stopped being "that person" a long time ago; it's a losing battle my friend.

OT: This contraption would never work with my Xbox 360. The tray opens on my console once for every 10 pushes of the button; it's really temperamental. There'd be discs flying everywhere with no place to go!

gmaverick019:oh jeez in b4 the lego nazi who has to correct everyone on their usage of the word "lego" being plural *sigh*

That would be me! The constant use of "Legos" in reference to multiple Lego bricks drives me insane. However I stopped being "that person" a long time ago; it's a losing battle my friend.

OT: This contraption would never work with my Xbox 360. The tray opens on my console once for every 10 pushes of the button; it's really temperamental. There'd be discs flying everywhere with no place to go!

for once, you can say "am i the only one..." and could possibly mean it at this moment.

i wouldn't consider it a battle, so much as a kid with a slingshot versus an entire nation.

everyone i have ever known until i reached the escapist uses "legos" as the plural form, but i'm glad you are just dealing with it.

gmaverick019:oh jeez in b4 the lego nazi who has to correct everyone on their usage of the word "lego" being plural *sigh*

That would be me! The constant use of "Legos" in reference to multiple Lego bricks drives me insane. However I stopped being "that person" a long time ago; it's a losing battle my friend.

OT: This contraption would never work with my Xbox 360. The tray opens on my console once for every 10 pushes of the button; it's really temperamental. There'd be discs flying everywhere with no place to go!

Sorry dude, legos is just a fun word to say. Can't blame you for what you find annoying though. Speaking of which...

For me this would be very impractical because I keep my games on a shelf, in order so I never need to shearch the discs up and the change goes a lot faster.My friend on the other hand, has games all over the house, in wrong boxes (not same game as shown on picture kinda stuff) so fro him to change/find a game might take longer than this. So for him just the carousel with the discs alone might be a good option.

An issue... How do you get to the USBs?Another... If you used a wired controller, or have a charger plugged in, and you accidentally kick the wire and it moves the Xbox slightly it would throw everything off.Also, cost... time... dust on the discs... It would be a pain to reset all those discs it you accidentally knocked it and they all fell out...

Mainly it seems to be very wasteful of space and of time (and bricks). If you want a conversation piece and something impressive to display, and you have room for it, then it's all good.

Otherwise, I can't help thinking something more akin to yer old 45rpm jukebox rack would be more practical. All the discs lined up in a single horizontal row, you only then need to locate by distance along the rack, and the disc is plucked from or dropped into a simple groove in an L-shaped holster. Separation distance just enough to get the gripping jaws in - or if you have a ton of actuators to spare, they can be almost touching, and the relevant disc is pushed proud of all the others by a small lever, easily grabbed without even having to dive into the stack.

Pretty sure I've seen actual commercial high-density disc changer systems that work on that principle. This looks more like a high-grade backup tape library robot system, but turned inside out... (normally the picker would be on the inside of a cylindrical chamber, surrounded by an endless wall of tape holsters, and a small stack of actual drives)

Still, if all the bricks you had were ones that allowed you to make this and not the other one... party on.

(Now, upgrade it - make one that accepts jewel and/or DVD cases, and can both open them and retrieve the disc from within, and also replace disc in case, then close and store said case... and can keep track of and deal with multi-disc games/cases...)

Computers generally still have DVD drives in them... though increasingly few games come on physical media, you can still get it, and there's enough existing titles that were sold that way.

It'd be a cool, if shockingly unneccessary hack for, say, a classic gaming system. I've got one in my lounge for which I'm currently trying to find a sub-520mb hard disk to upgrade it (from 160; it has a pretty ancient, limited BIOS), as doing full installs of all the games I'd like to play with it has left the drive really rather cramped, and there's plenty more left that I didn't have space for... if I could get away with minimum installs instead (it has an 8x CD drive, which is enough for such games) then the need for a new disc would go away (pulling the games off the shelf and swapping them in IS something of a pain when your PC lives in the lounge rather than on a desk). Just means I'd have to build one of these carousels, and try to find room for it.

Terrible jokes aside, this was pretty neat. I couldn't help but notice that the entire bottom row was comprised of burned discs, so I'm assuming that this is also set up to be his own little media center for more than just games.

gmaverick019:oh jeez in b4 the lego nazi who has to correct everyone on their usage of the word "lego" being plural *sigh*

That would be me! The constant use of "Legos" in reference to multiple Lego bricks drives me insane. However I stopped being "that person" a long time ago; it's a losing battle my friend.

OT: This contraption would never work with my Xbox 360. The tray opens on my console once for every 10 pushes of the button; it's really temperamental. There'd be discs flying everywhere with no place to go!

Sorry dude, legos is just a fun word to say. Can't blame you for what you find annoying though. Speaking of which...

Whoever made that gif should have flipped the sunglasses horizontally so the temple went to the right side of his head. Not important, just slightly annoying.

Agreed, you would think if the person was smart enough to make the gif, they could have just mirrored it over, but i suppose causing an annoyance was only complimentary to the use of the word "legos" :)